Caning of Sumner

The assault against Senator Charles Sumner of Massachusetts by South Carolina congressman Preston Brooks in May 1856 shocked most northerners and thrilled many southerners. However, this violent episode in the heart of the U.S. Capitol illustrated to nearly everyone that the sectional conflict was becoming far more than a battle of words. (By Matthew Pinsker)

Caning of Sumner (Boyer, 2008)

Textbook
On the day before the sack of Lawrence, Republican senator Charles Sumner of Massachusetts delivered a bombastic and wrathful speech, "The Crime Against Kansas," in which he verbally whipped most of the U.S. Senate for complicity in slavery. Sumner singled out Senator Andrew Butler of South Carolina…Two days later, a relative of Butler, Democratic representative Preston Brooks of South Carolina, strode into the Senate chamber, found Sumner at his desk, and struck him repeatedly with a cane. The hollow can broke after five or six blows, but Sumner required stitches, experienced shock, and did not return to the Senate for three years. Brooks became an instant hero in the South, and the fragments of his weapon were "begged as sacred relics." A new cane, presented to Brooks by the city of Charleston, bore the inscription "Hit him again."
Paul S. Boyer, et al., eds., The Enduring Vision: A History of the American People, 6th ed. (Boston: Houghton Mifflin Company, 2008), 409.
Date Event
Representative Brooks attacks Senator Sumner in the Senate chamber
Preston Brooks dies suddenly in Washington, D.C.
Charleston, SC
Massachusetts
South Carolina
United States Capitol, Washington DC
Date Title
New York Herald, "Our Boston Correspondance," July 26, 1856
New York Times, "The Re-election of Mr. Sumner," January 13, 1857
New York Times, “The Charleston Press on the Death of Preston S. Brooks,” February 4, 1857
Theodore Parker to Charles Sumner, February 27, 1857
New York Times, “Mr. Marcy on the Sumner Assault,” September 2, 1857
New York Times, “A Democratic Dove from Georgia,” July 16, 1859
New York Times, “The Senatorial Inquisition,” February 11, 1860
New York Times, “Manufacturing Martyrs,” February 16, 1860
Chicago (IL) Press and Tribune, “Sumner’s Speech,” June 8, 1860
Cleveland (OH) Herald, “Who Began It?,” September 21, 1860
Fayetteville (NC) Observer, “Brooks and Sumner,” December 6, 1860
Chicago Style Entry Link
Gienapp, William E. "Crime Against Sumner: The Caning of Charles Sumner and the Rise of the Republican Party." Civil War History 25, no. 3 (1979): 218-245. View Record
Sinha, Manisha. "The Caning of Charles Sumner: Slavery, Race, and Ideology in the Age of the Civil War." Journal of the Early Republic 23, no. 2 (Summer 2003), 233-262. View Record
Tyson, Raymond W. “William Barksdale and the Brooks-Sumner Assault.” Journal of Mississippi History 26 (May 1964): 135-140. View Record
How to Cite This Page: "Caning of Sumner," House Divided: The Civil War Research Engine at Dickinson College, https://hd.housedivided.dickinson.edu/node/16527.